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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27186832">Woven Up</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesdaycoming/pseuds/tuesdaycoming'>tuesdaycoming</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canonical Character Death, Dwarf Culture &amp; Customs, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hair Braiding, Non-Consensual Drug Use</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:54:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,839</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27186832</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesdaycoming/pseuds/tuesdaycoming</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Zolf is still a child, he sits and watches his father braid his mother’s hair in the low firelight.<br/>-<br/>A history of Zolf Smith, told in beads and braids.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sasha Racket &amp; Zolf Smith, Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>80</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Woven Up</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The non-con drug use is blink and you'll miss it. It can be avoided by skipping the paragraph beginning "A dwarven woman"</p>
<p>I yelled about this in Rome, so here we are.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Zolf is still a child, he sits and watches his father braid his mother’s hair in the low firelight. There’s never enough wood on the pile, but they keep it lit through sheer force of will through the evening hours. Zolf realizes, decades later, the light is for his and Feryn’s benefit more than it ever is for their parents. His father can weave his mother’s hair by touch alone, does, Zolf is sure, when the fire is out and new plaits appear in her hair come morning. </p>
<p>The braids his father weaves are his mother’s beauty. When he comes in from the mine, Zolf knows, he knows, how those worn hands must ache as he pieces together the fine, four stranded braids into a crown hung with clever chains that will wink in the sun when she waves them off to work in the morning. </p>
<p>When Zolf is old enough to enter the mines for the first time, not old enough at all, not really, he carves his first bead for his mother. It is a lump of dark wood he shapes into sharp planes, center hole smoothed over a week of evenings with rough cloth so none of her golden curls get caught on the wood grain. The first time she wears it, Zolf braids it in himself so it rests on top of the gleaming bronze bead set with a fleck of sapphire, finer even than her wedding beads, which was woven into his mother’s hair when Zolf was born. </p>
<p>His bead remains there, in one of the four braids she wears behind her left ear. Husband, tin wrought in as fine a fashion as the metal will allow, Feryn, copper and flecks of burnished gold, Zolf, wood and bronze, her own parents, plain gold rings that dangle lower than the rest. There are whispers that run through their village, of the strings of beads his mother should have brought with her when she married onto this mountain. Zolf is not bothered by whispers. He slips the golden rings over his fingers, one by one, while his mother cards her own fingers through his curls. He is blond, like her, and when she plaits his hair into a four stranded braid that keeps his eyes clear when he goes running off, he knows he is being made beautiful. </p>
<p>Zolf stands in front of his mother and she tugs on the wisp of beard that has only now started to grow in. His is already grown to his father’s shoulder, a year older than Feryn was when his beard was fit to braid and his first proper beads were given to him. “You’ll be as bushy as your father is, mark me.” He is too big now to be bundled up in her arms, but she laughs and it feels almost the same. “Before we know it you’ll need a wife to keep it tamed, so best get to work so you can return the favor, eh?” And Zolf goes to the mine, and he imagines the braids he will weave, and he combs his beard. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>There aren’t many dwarves on the sea. When Zolf joins up, his captain takes a long, steady look at his curls held back in a loose plait woven by Zolf’s own, fumbling fingers. His captain is human, and not unkind, but Zolf takes it upon himself to hack his hair short with a regulation issue knife the next time the ship makes port and can raise a blade near his skin without fearing an errant wave will throw his feet from underneath him. It is a poor job, but one of his crew-mates takes pity on him, cleans the lines of his hair into something that looks like a choice. When he touches Zolf’s beard, still young and sparse toward the center, and suggests, “Could trim this up too if you like.” Well. Zolf thinks it’s probably for the best. </p>
<p>Luck, certainly no human hand, leaves him with beard enough to keep a braid hidden on the left side. The braid is almost subsumed by the bead clasped at it’s end. His father had pulled it from Feryn’s hair before he was laid beneath the stone, and when Zolf fled in the night, his mother had placed it in his hand. He doesn’t touch the braid if he can help it. </p>
<p>The ship is as far from the mountain Zolf grew up on as is possible without crossing another ocean when he opens a letter informing him of his parents’ deaths. If there were mourning beads tucked into the envelope when it was mailed, they’ve left no mark on the page. Zolf takes his knife and etches two jagged lines into Feryn’s bead. There are no dwarves on board to watch him butcher this, but he can’t find it in him to be glad of it. Someone should witness, if only to confirm that he, with shorn locks and a scraggly beard, hardly counts as a dwarf anymore. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>The thing about pirates is, as far as Zolf can tell, people can see the good sense in keeping your wealth close to your person at all times. His hair grows long and stays loose. His beard grows heavy with gold, twenty-five rings knotted in. </p>
<p>A dwarven woman in a port Zolf never bothers to learn the name of tells him he looks fierce, and sits in his lap to catch her fingers in the tangle of his hair. She has plaited sideburns and a braid holding the rest of her hair back, and Zolf wonders if it’s a difference in style or deference to the patrons of the bar who whistle at him when she buys him a drink. He buys her bed, and when he wakes, his rings are gone, his beard is combed, and the clasp of his brother’s bead is still shut firm. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Dwarves are rare in the Cult of Poseidon too, but beards are not. Zolf wears his hair in two plaits. It’s all he can manage, but, for a while, it’s enough. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Zolf doesn’t realize Sasha’s actually missed the catch on her latest dagger toss until she’s already backed up to press against the nearest wall, hand pressed firm against her palm to stop the bleeding. It takes another moment to locate the offending dagger, red tipped on the plush, hotel rug. Sasha glares at it, though Zolf doubts it will be a long making-up process. He gesutres, doesn’t step closer, “’Ve still got spells,” he offers, “if you want that fixed.” There is a non-zero chance she’ll decline. Zolf has no doubt Sasha could stay that stark still and washed in shadow as long as it would take for him to fall asleep. </p>
<p>“I would have caught it,” he knows. “It’s just that Bertie snores.” And it’s less that he sees Sasha move than that Sasha simply arrives beside him with her hand out. Not for the first time, Zolf wonders if she isn’t blessed by Nox. But no, he thinks. Sasha is just good. When he heals her, Sasha stretches her fingers out, one by one, as if testing he’s put everything back in working order. “Only got the four fingers left, see.” </p>
<p> Sasha sits backwards in an overstuffed chair, leaning back with her legs up so she can look at Zolf upside down, fingers still clenching and unclenching over her stomach. It’s a long time before she speaks. “You always do your hair the same way.” Zolf waits for a follow up that doesn’t come. </p>
<p>“Bit hard to manage.” He admits. In the space of a shrug, Sasha is out of her chair and perched on the back of the couch where Zolf is sitting. She makes a noise that reads as a request, and Zolf swallows. “Yeah.” He lets his posture fall until his back presses against her legs. They are both pinned from different sides. Sasha’s fingers are small, but she spends time scratching his scalp when she undoes his braids. </p>
<p>“My hair used to be proper long like this.” Sasha doesn’t have a brush so she uses her fingers and Zolf doesn’t complain. “Brock’s the one what cut it. Told the others it was a joke, but he knew I’d like it better.” It’s the last thing either of them say to each other that night. Zolf goes to bed in the wee hours of the morning, but the braids Sasha weaves are strong. They hold firm until they’re waiting out a Parisian riot in the dead of night and Sasha sits herself behind Zolf, keeps her hands busy. It happens just once more. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Zolf finds a gnome barber willing to cut his hair in Prague. The barber fastens the cape closed over Zolf’s beard, doesn’t offer trimming services or tall chairs. If Zolf wasn’t run down near to collapsing at that point, he doubts he would fit, but the barber is happy enough to take his business with only a passing remark to how infrequently he gets dwarves in his chair. Zolf sits in silence while his hair is cut short enough that the yellow waves don’t manage to curl. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Hamid’s bead is a gold and amethyst net that looks like it might break at any moment, but which stays solid under Zolf’s fingers no matter how much he fumbles as he braids it in. It is the kind of extravagant expense the rich women who mocked his mother coveted. In the long days of quarantine that become familiar too quickly, Zolf imagines weaving all the gold in the fault he didn’t ask for into a lover’s hair and bringing them to that mountain. Would they feel shame then, or had the veins reached even there? </p>
<p>Sasha is obsidian cut with deep furrows in the stone that manage to cast shadows over the dark planes. More than once, Zolf reaches beneath his beard to touch the beads he’s woven there, and panics when he cannot find it, only to discover it has slipped behind Feryn’s or rests above Hamid’s. He would change the weave, but he thinks she would like being able to hide from him. </p>
<p>There is no way to hide them entirely during the post quarantine inspections. He doesn’t explain them to Wilde, and Wilde doesn’t ask, but he runs his fingers through Zolf’s beard in the quiet moments they spend together, when the world is pressing down and all they can do is wait. Wilde plaits Zolf’s beard in one simple braid that catches his weaving up in one of the large strands one night, and Zolf knows if Oscar moves his hand any closer he’ll feel Zolf’s heart through his chest. </p>
<p>It doesn’t mean anything. </p>
<p>Oscar buys an emerald ring without a clasp and Zolf fits it over that large braid, and that doesn’t mean anything either. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>The resurrection takes hours to complete. Zolf spends them with a whittling knife and a hunk of splintered wood from the hull of Amelia’s ship in his hands.</p>
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